Frederick Rolfe Quotes

• Truth is tarter than taradiddles; and nothing is tarter, terser, than truth on the track of tired trash in a trance.

  Frederick Rolfe

  Tired, Track, Truth Is

  8 Copy quote

• An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is, to a vain and sensitive soul, a stinging insult.

  Frederick Rolfe

  Soul, Insult, Sensitive

  "Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 296), 1963.

  4 Copy quote

• It's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.

  Frederick Rolfe

  Two, Common, Human Nature

  "Don Tarquinio" by Frederick Rolfe, London: Chatto and Windus, (p. x), 1941.

  5 Copy quote

• Brisk and prompt to war, soft and not in the least able to resist calamity, fickle in catching at schemes, and always striving after novelties - French characteristics remained unaltered twenty centuries after Julius Caesar made a note of them for all time.

  Frederick Rolfe

  War, Twenties, Fickle

  "Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 58), 1963.

  17 Copy quote

• The student of history knows no more refreshing recreation than that of nailing liars, like vermin, to the wall.

  Frederick Rolfe

  Wall, Liars, Students

  Frederick Rolfe (1931). “A History of the Borgias”

  5 Copy quote

• Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it.

  Frederick Rolfe

  Men, People, Personality

  "Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 343), 1963.

  4 Copy quote

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